


Memories of a Woman in White

by wneleh



Series: Memories/Facebook [1]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Blair Sandburg's Father, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wneleh/pseuds/wneleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case causes troubling memories from Blair's early childhood to surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memories of a Woman in White

_Some time during season three, say late Oct./early Nov. of 1997_

The bedroom of Kenny Yates, missing for three days, was in perfect order, but the child's mother, Arlene, seemed to be unable to keep from further tidying. The room wasn't a crime scene, since Kenny had vanished, as nearly as anyone could tell, from right outside his first grade classroom, so they had no grounds for asking Arlene to leave, but Blair Sandburg suspected that the constant activity of the woman - changing the order of books on a shelf, straightening how shirts were hanging on their hangers in the closet, dashing off to get a solvent-soaked rag to wipe the computer screen - was making the work of his partner, friend, and research subject, Detective Jim Ellison, impossible. Jim sneezed and rubbed at his eyes; whatever Arlene had used to clean the screen must be bothering him.

How does one make small talk with a woman whose child is missing? "I bet Kenny is really into trucks," Blair said.

"Yes - yes he wa - he is," said Arlene. "Anything with wheels."

"Neat." That sounded profound. But the woman had stopped moving, and Jim shot him a grateful look. "He has a lot of books, too," Blair observed.

"Mostly from my parents," said Arlene. "He only likes stories with scary things in them, though. Dragons and stuff like that."

Hence, the dragon posters. It really was a nice room for a small boy, especially given that Arlene, a single mom who worked as an aid in a nursing home, couldn't exactly be rolling in cash. Tonka trucks and teddy bears, plastic swords and Transformers. The stuff of little-boyhood; in a year or two, the kid would probably be beyond most of these toys, as early childhood yielded to - what? The Wonder Years? Blair's own childhood had been pretty wonderful, and Blair fervently hoped that Kenny would get to experience those years.

He glanced over at Jim, who was continuing to scrutinize the room methodically, in the probably-vain hope that the original officers who'd responded to the report of Kenny's disappearance, using standard techniques, had missed something. If he'd been observed for a while by an abductor, or if his mother or an acquaintance were involved, there was a chance that there'd be something incriminating, or at least not right, in the house, particularly in this room. Arlene now watched Jim intently. Could it be that there was something here she didn't want found? No. Wringing hands, bleary eyes, slight tremor - this was a woman poised for deep mourning, hoping against hope that THIS might be the police officer who would tumble onto a clue that would bring her her child back.

A small rubber ball caught Blair's attention. It was the ball of a little kid, too light to be thrown very hard or very far. Instead of being colored to look like a basket ball or soccer ball, like the others it shared a basket with, it was blue with red circles and yellow triangles; the placement of the shapes seemed absolutely perfect. Blair reached for it, knowing how it would feel in his hands and how well it would fly. The smell of old rubber surrounded him; he could taste it, it was so thick.

Blair picked up the ball and tossed it lightly; the motion drew Jim's attention from the curtains he'd been studying. The message in Jim's scowl was clear: 'Don't mess with the toys.' But, damn it, this wasn't a designated crime scene, and Arlene had probably dusted the ball three times since Kenny had last been in the room. They were just grasping at straws - touching the ball wouldn't hurt anything.

While the logical part of his brain urged him to put the ball down, at least while poor Arlene Yates was watching, Blair started to swing his arm back.

Mid-swing, his arm stopped. He could picture the ball soaring across a vast lawn, being caught by someone who could have been Jackie Kennedy's slightly hipper little sister. The woman laughed and threw the ball back, her dark, bobbed hair spilling out from a blue kerchief which complimented her white linen dress perfectly.

'This is my ball', he thought. 'Jakie's ball.' The smell was making him sick. "Um, Jim, I'll wait in the truck", he said. Jim glanced up only briefly as he rushed past Arlene Yates.

\- - - - - -

Blair expected a lecture on crime scene procedure when Jim joined him a few minutes later; instead, as he started up the truck, Jim turned to him and looked him over with an intensity that made Blair feel vaguely uncomfortable. "You okay, Chief?" he asked.

"Sure."

"I'm the one who goes off into la la land in this partnership, got it?"

"La la land? Jim, you wouldn't know la la land if it..." Blair couldn't think of a physically possible thing for a fictitious land to do, though, so he let the sentence trail off.

"Good," said Jim. "I have some things to bounce off you."

"Oh?"

"What did you think of the house?"

"Cute. Ms. Yates has a good eye."

"Ms. Yates makes twenty-two-five a year, counting overtime."

"So her boyfriend is picking up the tab?"

"That's what I wanted to bounce off you. Arlene Yates is known to the authorities, it turns out, as the girlfriend of Jimmy Baxter. Remember him?"

"Ummm."

"He owned some laundromats that were being used for washing more than clothes. He was killed in a shoot-out with the feds in one of their classic screw-ups a few years ago. On the Green Street Bridge, on the side opposite from where we took Veronica Sarris down, as a matter of fact. It was in the papers."

"To be honest, Jim, before I met you I didn't much pay attention to that sort of thing."

"Really?"

"Can't fathom why not, though. New boyfriend?"

"She says not."

"So Baxter bought her the house with cash or something?"

"I confronted her, and she was completely up front. He gave her the house when Kenny was born."

"So, what's odd about that? Especially a few years ago, that house wouldn't have cost more than 70K. Maybe less."

"What's odd is that the house was probably bought with drug money, and nobody has gone after it."

"Um... compassion on the part of the DA or something?"

"Chief, do we live in the same city here?"

"Huh."

"So I asked her if she thought that maybe some of Jimmy's old friends might have gotten to Kenny in revenge. She said she doubted it - most were in jail. Then she swore me to secrecy..."

"She WHAT? You didn't agree to that, did you?"

"Well, not exactly. But she's not officially a suspect..."

"So what did she tell you?"

"She thinks 'the guys' still care about her and Kenny - seems she gets anonymous gifts for him, like his winter coat."

"Huh."

"Exactly, Chief. I don't think Jimmy's dead. Either some of his old pals know this and are using Kenny to get to him, or he's grabbed Kenny himself."

"Shit."

"Actually, it's good news. If he has Kenny the kid is probably safe. Jimmy's rep had him as being fundamentally non-violent."

Being in a shoot-out with FBI agents didn't meet Blair's definition of non-violent behavior. "But poor Arlene."

"And, if Kenny is being used to get to him, than we have something to work with here. We might just be able to get our hands on Jimmy and some of his pals in the process."

"Wonderful."

"Hey, Blair, it's my job."

"So, you really don't think some pervert grabbed him, and..."

"Do you have any idea how rare real non-family abductions are? Real kidnappings, not some kid grabbed for five minutes during a hold-up? There are maybe a hundred a year in the U.S., probably fewer. And we've already had one this year in Cascade."

"Right. Nothing improbable ever happens here. So, where to now?"

"Kenny's school. I want to take a look at the playground where he might have vanished from."

"'Might have'?"

"The stories conflict a bit. Truth is, nobody really knows. That's pretty typical."

Neither man spoke for a few moments. Then, in a voice Blair recognized as Jim's best impression of someone not really prying, he asked, "So, what was the deal with that ball?"

"I don't know. It seemed really familiar."

"I think every kid in America has a ball like that."

But it wasn't the ball that had him rattled, Blair realized - it was the woman in white, and the name that filled his mind when he thought about it. Jakie. Had Jakie been a friend of his? Was the woman Jakie's mother? Maybe she'd been his babysitter. Blair closed his eyes and imagined holding the ball with smaller hands. In his mind's eye, the yellow triangles which spanned the ball's equator held scraggly black letters. J-A-C-O-B. The C was backwards, and Blair felt a flush of remembered embarrassment. His middle name was Jacob. For some reason, he'd written his middle name on the ball.

\- - - - - - -

Powell Elementary was a substantial brick building in an otherwise quiet residential area, sunken a bit such that Blair could easily survey the grounds as they parked near the playground and got out of the truck. The playground was directly accessible from what Blair guessed were four classrooms, presumably for the youngest kids; the building jagged in and out, allowing each of these rooms to have windows facing two directions. A 5' wooden fence separated the playground, on one side, from a large athletic field, on the other the sidewalk and street they'd parked on. There were no trees, but the area near the field was grassy, with bushes right along the fence. The area near the street was paved, with painted foursquare courts and a few tetherball poles. There were two gates: one was located near the building, so that one could exit the playground and walk between the school and the athletic field toward the main doors; the other opened onto the street.

Though it was a Saturday, they were greeted at the street gate (which bore a poster with a picture of Kenny Yates) by a woman in her late 40's whose attire - a fire-engine red polyester suit, cream-colored blouse, and low brown pumps - was meant to be recognizable from a distance and to project authority to people with no fashion sense. In other words, it screamed 'Vice Principal'. The woman identified herself as Mrs. Morris - apparently, people who dealt with small children were no more likely to possess first names in the 90's than they had been in the 70's. Well, except, of course, for Naomi, Blair mused. His mother had always been "Naomi," not "mom", never "Ms. Sandburg" to anyone.

"It's so upsetting," said the woman. "Everyone just thinks the world of Kenny."

"Do you know him?" asked Blair.

"I try to know all our children."

"Is anyone available who was out with Kenny's class on Wednesday?" Jim asked.

"No, I was told that wouldn't be necessary. They've all talked to the police," said Mrs. Morris.

"That's fine," said Jim. "I've read their statements, I was just hoping for some help with logistics. Could you tell us what happened, as you understand it, for my partner?"

"Certainly," she said. "The first graders have lunch at 11, then recess from 11:30 to noon. Their teachers aren't with them during lunch, but join them in the cafeteria at the end of the lunch period. Several children say they ate lunch with Kenny, and Mrs. Jones - that's his teacher - is pretty sure he was with her class when they came out to play. But, it was such a nice day that the children came directly to the playground from the cafeteria, through that other gate, instead of going through their classroom to get jackets or whatever, and so she didn't ever line them up at the door alphabetically; if she'd done that, she says she's sure she would have noticed if a child had gone missing. She's feeling terribly guilty about this, I assure you, though I'm sure this doesn't mean the school is - um - liable..."

"What about a lunch box or back pack?" asked Blair.

"Kenny gets a subsidized lunch, so he wouldn't have had anything like that with him."

"And when did someone notice Kenny was missing?" asked Jim.

"Not until the children were back in their classroom. The Kindergarteners come out for a brief time at noon, and it's very chaotic, with two classes of first graders heading inside and two classes of Kindergarteners coming out. The teachers try to do a count, but sometimes it's safest all around to just get inside quickly. Some of our Kindergarteners are only four, you know, though the board of education votes on moving the Kindergarten birthday cutoff to September 1 next month in fact. And some come to us with such poor impulse control! You really don't want them mixing too much with older children, bigger children..."

Some day, Blair suspected, he'd find that sort of monologue fascinating. Not today. "They said all the gates were closed?" he interrupted.

"That's our policy," said Mrs. Morris.

"Do children ever try to wander off?" asked Jim.

"No. We always have three adults out here, so that if a child needs anything someone can walk with them back into the building."

"Three adults?" asked Blair. "That's a pretty good ratio."

"We get that by having two classes out at once, plus one of our aids."

"My niece is in Kindergarten," said Jim. "She talks about walking to the office with a buddy."

"Well, we DO allow the kids to walk in the hallways. But not from the playground into the school. I can assure you that we would notice a child going out one of the gates. And ABSOLUTELY no strange adult would be able to get NEAR any of the children out here."

They walked around the climbing structure, then over to the bushes. Blair had immediately wondered if there might be footprints around the bushes - there were, dozens, from as many different types of shoes. "If a kid WANTED to skip out of school, could he maybe hide here, do you think?" asked Blair.

"That's the first thing every police officer has asked," said Mrs. Morris. "If Kenny was twelve, I'd believe it. Though a 12-year-old could just not come to school, and leave us out of things entirely. But that's not how a first grader acts."

"Theoretically, though..."

"These bushes aren't that thick, in any event," she said. Jim turned and smiled.

"Mrs. Morris, you've been a great help. We'll look around out here a while, but don't feel you need to stay with us."

Mrs. Morris' answering smile was not quite as broad; clearly, she didn't like being dismissed from her own domain. "I'll head up to my office then for a bit," she said. "It's right upstairs, overlooking the playground. Call me if you need me."

"Um... and you didn't see anyone from up there acting suspicious on Wednesday?" Blair had to ask.

"I am seldom in my office during school hours, Mr. Sandburg! But no, I didn't see anything." She paused. "What - what are the chances of Kenny being found alive, do you think?"

"I think they are excellent," said Jim.

She searched his face and seemed to see something she liked; her smile became more genuine.

As she left the playground, they returned to the bushes.

"Maybe if you try to smell him..." Blair suggested.

"Unless he's a tom cat, Chief, I'm not going to be able to pick him out."

"Maybe if you try to separate out..."

"I'm separating. Three different cats."

"Ugh."

"Maybe four. And a collie."

"You can tell dog breeds by their scent? That's - that's - that could be another chapter, man! Or maybe an article for a paying mag-"

"I can tell COLLIES. Only collies."

"Oh."

"Anyway, there have probably been a hundred kids through here too, and even if Kenny hid here three days ago there's no reason to suspect it was for more than a minute or two."

"Oh... I was guessing that he would have waited for his class to head in, then slipped out."

"I'm betting he dived in here as they came through the gate, or maybe hung behind a little, then slipped out before the teachers got themselves organized."

"That's a pretty advanced plan for a six-year-old," said Blair.

"I'm betting he saw something, or someone, he wanted to see, out on the street as his class was walking to the playground. He then just looked for a chance and took it," said Jim. "No real planning involved."

Blair looked around the playground again. "Scaling the fence might have been possible, but that would have been noticed."

"Yeah, same with going out the gate we came in," said Jim. "But a quick kid could dart out the gate, hug the fence on the other side, and be on the street and in a car in about 20 seconds if he wanted to be."

Blair looked toward the building; the jagged profile also might have afforded Kenny some shelter, but he was becoming more convinced that Jim had nailed the method of Kenny's escape. Two floors above, he saw Mrs. Morris looking down at them. He suddenly felt more sympathy toward her than he'd thought it possible to feel for someone wearing fire-engine red polyester. If only she'd been in her office on Wednesday. If only she'd been looking out the window.

\- - - - - - -

While at the school, Blair had forgotten about Kenny's ball and about the woman in white. Looking back at the playground, though, he could almost imagine there being a large oak tree right in the middle, where the climbing structure was. And a swing set and merry-go-round. A single classroom door opened into the shady playground. He was running out the door and Naomi was waiting for him.

No, not Naomi. He'd really wanted it to be Naomi, but it was Mommy instead. "...Chief? I asked, are you going to buckle up or not?"

Jim was shaking his shoulder; Blair hoped Jim couldn't feel him vibrating inside his jacket. That memory so did NOT make sense. He remembered preschool well - a pilot Head Start program in an adobe building in downtown San Antonio. No big trees. So there couldn't have been some other Mommy woman. Okay, now he felt better. Making up extended family in times of stress was something he'd done a lot as a child. Though usually he didn't bother to invent a mother because that's the one position he had covered.

"Blair?"

"Oh, uh..." Blair realize d they were still idling at the curb. His buckle. Cops on TV never put on seatbelts. And they never, ever refused to move before all passengers were buckled in. Maybe some day he should ask Jim about that.

After he figured out how to get the belt fastened with hands which had inexplicably traded all their fingers for thumbs, Jim seemed content to let him be. In fact, Jim seemed almost giddy. "This one's going to end well," he said.

"What makes you think so?"

"Because there's no way stranger abduction's involved."

"If a member of his dad's gang has him..."

"To what end? And, besides, Arlene told me she's had no contact with them, beyond the gifts, which she says were anonymous."

"She could be protecting someone."

"Blair, give my lie-detection skills a LITTLE credit, would you? It has to be Jimmy that Kenny saw."

"The kid hasn't seen his dad in three years."

"But there are pictures of him all over his house. And kids have great memories. They make lousy witnesses because they mix everything up and throw in flying ponies, but I've been astounded by some of the things Stephen's girls have recalled."

"Maybe a school employee grabbed him on the way out of the cafeteria," said Blair.

"You had to say that, didn't you, Chief?"

"Well, you guys are checking that out, right?"

"We've been checking everything," Jim growled, lapsing into silence. Well, at least he was letting Blair be.

\- - - - - - -

That evening, Blair was grateful that Jim had a date. A second date, at that. With an incredibly beautiful woman, back in town after touring for months, who 'd just won a Grammy. Jim seemed almost disappointed that Blair didn't bother to tease him. He couldn't spare the energy, though - he had to figure out who the woman in white was. She'd gone way beyond playing catch and picking him up from preschool - he could imagine her giving him a bath, yelling at him to wipe his feet, even her showing him how to do something odd with his hands before sliding on a long wooden sofa in a large room with lots of people and very pretty windows. THAT one was just too weird. But he remembered going to mass once with a friend from Junior High and how he'd somehow known what to do, and hadn't known how he'd known.

After an hour of lying on his futon trying to clear his head and let the images come, he muttered, "let's hear it for nationwide roaming," and called Naomi on her cell phone.

After five minutes of listening to Naomi expound on how Charlie Spring (who, to Blair's astonishment, she hadn't dumped yet) had had a premonition that Blair would call, in fact she'd left her phone on for just that reason, and wasn't it lovely that she and Charlie were getting on so well and how Charlie couldn't stop talking about him, Blair finally broke in with "who's Jakie?"

Silence. Shit.

"I said, who's Jakie? Was I ever called Jakie?"

"Of course not, Blair."

"Did I ever have a friend named Jacob?"

"Really, Blair, how should I know?"

Which was a perfectly reasonable answer. But her initial silence had damned her. And now Blair knew that he was going about this all wrong, that Naomi was going to snow him, and, not being able to see her face, he'd have no idea what was truth, what invention.

"I saw something today that made me remember some stuff. From before we lived in San Antonio."

"Blair, you were so little when we lived in Texas. You were just over three when we moved there."

"I remember writing my middle name on a ball. Before Texas."

"Well, you were always very advanced, dear! I even entered some of your art in a contest at the Sears on Market Street. You remember that stuffed walrus you won?"

"Naomi..."

"What sort of ball? I remember you had this collection of super balls..."

"That's completely beside the point! Why did I write my middle name on ANYTHING? Who... did I have a babysitter that took care of me a lot? A Jackie Kennedy clone?"

"OH!" exclaimed Naomi, and Blair braced himself for what he knew would be, at best, an explanation made of half-truths. "You're remembering Janice Paulson. She had a son just your age. Poor little Jacob. I was waitressing, and she watched you quite a bit. And I watched Jacob. Until," and she sighed, "the accident."

"What happened?" Blair asked, hoping what he was about to hear was a lie.

"He was run over in a supermarket parking lot. They said he died quickly."

"Shit."

"You two had been so close. But, at three, you were too young to understand anything. It's - I'm afraid I wasn't a very good friend to Janice. I couldn't take the way she obsessed about you, after Jacob died. It was one of the reasons we moved away. If there's anything uneasy in your memories of Janice, I'm sure it's because you picked up on her grief, or maybe on my anxiety. You've always been so sensitive, which is why I really don't like you living with Jim..."

"Why don't I remember Jacob?"

"I'm sure you're repressing, darling. Just like you've repressed Janice."

"Why did I call her Mommy?"

"That was so cute. I was Mommy-Nomi and Janice was Mommy-Jani. After - well, after we moved, I tried to get you to drop the Nomi, and you dropped the Mommy instead."

"Why did she take me to church with her?"

"About a month after Jacob died, she watched you a few times. Her behavior just wasn't normal, though, like I said. Taking you to church without my knowledge or permission was the final straw. Not that I was opposed to you experiencing different cultures, of course!"

"Uh... thanks," said Blair.

"I'm sorry this is upsetting you so much, darling."

It was eerie how well she knew how to play him. He wasn't going to get anywhere. Or, maybe Naomi was being completely truthful?

"I'm sorry, Naomi, you're right, this is sort of throwing me for a loop. Say, where are you, anyway?"

"Actually, darling, we're heading up to the cabin in Alpine Falls for the week! We'll be there later this evening. If you hadn't called by 9, I was going to call you from there. When are you free?"

Alpine Falls! He could have just driven out to the mountain cabin Naomi co-owned, and gotten facts instead of - whatever it was she was spinning.

After promising to call when his calendar was in front of him, Blair hung up. Naomi had let slip one possibly-important bit of information. He'd heard about the origins of Petey the Walrus, long since passed along to a cousin, before - how he'd won it for a self-portrait he'd done in conjunction with the opening of a Sears photo studio. He'd figured it had been when they'd lived in San Antonio. But, Naomi had specifically said that it had been at the Sears on Market Street. Meaning, they'd been living in Cascade. He'd always known he'd been born in Cascade, and lived with his grandparents in the Heights right after he was born, but he'd always assumed (and Naomi had always implied) that they'd moved out of state when he was a baby, presumably after some big fight - his only memories of his grandparents were from when they moved back to Cascade when he was 11, so that they could be near them as they both struggled with, and eventually died from, cancer.

All this was based on the assumption that Naomi really was his mother. She just had to be! They were so much alike. And, if she wasn't - then, who was she? Had she, perhaps, been the neighbor, the favorite babysitter who'd lost a child? In other words, was his whole life a lie? Had his real mother been in mourning for him for the past 25 years - mired in grief, waiting for a knock on her door - while he'd played love child to a hippy flower child?

\- - - - - - -

The next morning, Blair was surprised to find Jim home - well, given that Angie Ferris had a daughter, maybe it wasn't too surprising.

"How'd it go?" he asked over his Cheerios with soy milk.

"Really well," said Jim between bites of scrambled eggs. "She's a great lady, Chief."

"So, time for me to start looking for a new pad?"

Jim actually looked shocked at the suggestion, making Blair feel a little low for going digging for affirmation. Well, it had been that sort of a weekend. And, it WAS a valid question.

"No, no, don't start shopping for a blender for us yet! And, well, I was figuring we'd both move into her place and you'd share Pam's room."

"In eight years, that would be a hard proposition to say 'no' to!"

"You have a dirty mind, Chief."

"Okay, twelve years."

"And, anyway, I don't think Angie is 'the one'."

Now it was Blair's turn to be startled. "What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing! But I just... I have this image of me as Kevin Costner when I think about her and me. And you know what happened after 'The Bodyguard.'"

"No."

"'Waterworld' Chief. That's what happened ."

"Not... uh... 'Field of Dreams'? Or 'Plays with Video Cameras'?"

"'Waterworld'. And you know how I feel about deep water."

"Right."

"And besides, I don't really like her music that much."

"What!"

"Now if she was Santana..."

"If she was a guy old enough to be my dad, you'd marry her?"

"Too old to be your dad."

"Very funny. You'd take Santana over Angie?"

"Or Jim Morrison."

"Male AND dead. That's so much better, Jim."

"Well, and then there's always Janis."

"WHO?" Blair practically shouted. The woman in white?

"Janis Joplin. You know, 'oh, oh, oh, Bobby McGee...'"

"Oh, right," said Blair, his heart pounding.

"You okay? My singing's not that bad," said Jim.

"Never mind."

Jim nodded, backing off again.

"But, for now, I think I'll see if I can get to know Angie a bit better," Jim said.

\- - - - - - -

Since Blair's task for the day - grading a stack of Anthro 101 midterm exams, consisting of in-class essays - could be done anywhere, he decided to accompany Jim into the station for a few hours.

"How long will you be working weekends on this one?" he asked as they headed downtown.

"Until Kenny is found, or until it gets put in 'the file.'"

"And how long is that?"

"I'm ready to file it right now."

Blair's anger from the previous day resurfaced. "You can't just assume that some guy raised himself from the dead to make your paperwork easier!"

"Did I happen to mention that Jimmy Baxter fell off that bridge after being shot by the feds? His body was never found."

"And anyway, even if his dad did grab him, where does this leave Arlene Yates?"

"Sandburg, if Jimmy has Kenny, they aren't in Cascade. Special Crimes won't find them."

\- - - - - - -

Blair and Jim ran into detective Rafe and Brown as the entered the station. The two were heading to some of Jimmy's old haunts, the theory being that if he'd come into town recently he might be trying to tie up other loose ends as well.

"What sorts of 'haunts' are open at 10 a.m. on a Sunday?" Blair wondered.

"Starbucks," said Rafe.

\- - - - - - -

Simon was also in. As they exited the elevator and walked towards Jim's desk, Blair saw him, through the glass which separated his office from the bull pen, make his trade-markable pissed-off grimace in response to what he was hearing on his phone; looking up and catching Blair's eye, he gestured them over as he hung up.

"It's one for the 'file', looks like," he said.

"The Kenny Yates case?" asked Blair. "How can you say that already? Why are you guys so anxious to file this kid's life?"

"Because Arlene Yates went missing last night. We had a uniform staying with her in case a ransom call came in. At about 10 p.m., she told her she was going out for a bit. That's the last she saw of her."

"And we didn't have a tail on her why?" asked Jim.

"Because it was Saturday night and the personnel just weren't available."

"So - what do you think happened?" asked Blair.

"Maybe she got something in the mail yesterday," said Jim. "The truck drove into her neighborhood when we were leaving."

"Maybe she's delivering ransom money herself," said Blair. "She could be in real trouble."

"We checked her bank records," said Simon. "No unusual activity. She did make a withdrawal last night, at 10:13 pm. $200. Which was her maximum, and probably will result in some bounced checks. If that's what kidnappers are asking in ransom these days, remind me to stay out of the business."

"You're also thinking it's Jimmy who grabbed Kenny?" asked Jim.

"Looks like," said Simon. "And he contacted Arlene to tell her where to meet them," said Jim.

"Maybe the kid got homesick for mommy, or maybe he didn't mean for Kenny to spot him and is improvising," said Simon. "It all holds together."

"The only question is whether the Feds are in on it, or whether Jimmy faked his own death," mused Jim.

"THIS IS COMPLETE BULLSHIT SPECULATION! YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE FOR ANY OF THIS!" Blair almost screamed.

Simon looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. Jim just looked sad.

"Sandburg, when you are in my office, you will control your temper. AM I CLEAR?"

"It's the case, Simon," said Jim. "There's a kid involved, and Blair's used to a pretty high solve rate. Thanks, in large part, to his contributions. Right Blair?"

"DAMN IT, DON'T PATRONIZE ME!" Blair took a deep breath. Yelling, getting more upset, nothing like that would change their minds. He'd work on this case himself until they found Kenny. He could do it.

"I just can't believe you want to circular file this so quickly," said Blair.

"CIRCULAR file?" asked Simon.

"You keep talking about 'filing' the case. Like that's your goal."

"Oh, shit, Blair, let me explain," said Jim. "See, abductions like what happened to Kenny, most of the time they are done by family members."

"Yeah, I gathered that, but I don't see how that's relevant."

"Let me continue. Now, with stranger-abductions - well, we shouldn't really call them 'stranger', because usually there's been some previous contact with the child. But anyway, with them, the critical time is the first three hours. If the child is going to be killed or seriously abused, it's going to happen then. Even with violent non-custodial parents, that's the critical time frame I think. In Kenny's case, the PD worked damn hard that first day, from the moment the school called us. Every adult who was in that school on Wednesday has been investigated, and now more thorough investigations are being conducted. H and Rafe have been supporting the officers working the case since Wednesday afternoon, when Kenny didn't just wander out of a broom closet. And, of course I spent yesterday seeing if I could detect anything that everyone else missed.

"I don't know how long this level of effort will continue. Probably until the next big crisis, unless we figure out definitively what Arlene Yates has been up to since yesterday evening.

"Eventually, especially if it really looks like a parental abduction, the case will be handled off to a task force... Simon, what's it called this month?"

"I keep you around to ask YOU that sort of question."

"Anyway, a task force made up of officers from Missing Persons, a full-time social worker, and several public defenders who specialize in family law. Their job is to get all the adults involved in a situation to act like grown-ups. This is hard when one of the parents is in hiding, but most people don't operate in that sort of crisis mode for long. They prosecute sometimes, but often that isn't in the best interest of the child."

Simon, nodding, taking over the explanation. "Of course, with Jimmy Baxter, if he's alive, being a fugitive, things are more complicated. If we can tie him decisively to Kenny's disappearance, we, as much as I hate to say this, have to turn this over to the feds. If Kenny is the victim of stranger abduction - he's probably dead, but we'll keep pounding. It won't be you and Jim, though. Not the best use of Jim's talents."

"Huh?" said Blair. Who else would be better?

"Jim excels at cases where car chases, or better yet, helicopter chases, are a possibility."

"Simon, that's not fair!" exclaimed Jim.

"Tell that to someone who doesn't have to explain you to the safety office. Anyway, regarding Kenny Yates, there are, other possibilities - other relatives, he could be a runaway..."

"Not likely," interjected Jim.

"And we're investigating those possibilities too," said Simon. "Blair, please don't think we take this lightly."

"So, what's with wanting to 'file' the case?" asked Blair.

Jim said, "about, oh, 15 years ago as I understand it, just after the Walsh boy was kidnapped and murdered, the department decided that all information on children missing from this part of the state should be gathered together, to help discern patterns. I don't know what its official name is, but we call it 'the file.' Essentially, we treat it like any other cold case file. I've never done much with it myself, but there are guys who always go to it first. With the help of some volunteers, we have records going back to the 1950's. We try to make sure everything goes in - not just police records, but news accounts as well."

"Back to the 50's?" That would make them missing pensioners by now, almost.

"You gotta realize that, for a few years there, there was this belief that strangers were grabbing kids regularly from every street corner. Remember Atlanta? There was a sense that nobody knew whether that was typical and the authorities were asleep at the wheel. We wanted to see if there were serial abductions happening," said Jim.

"Uh... can I see it?" asked Blair.

"Don't believe us?" asked Simon.

"No, of course I do," said Blair. "But... I think I might be in it."

"You think someone might have separated you from Naomi?" asked Jim.

"No... I think Naomi might not be my real mother."

"That's the most ridiculous..." Simon stopped as Jim grabbed Blair's arm and steered him toward the elevator.

\- - - - - -

Blair had been in 'Records' many times running errands for Jim, but he had never paid the two tan 4-drawer filing cabinets in a rear corner any attention. Close-up, he wondered how he'd managed to miss the words 'MISSING CHILDREN' written in block letters on masking tape affixed to the top of the left cabinet.

Since ushering him out of Simon's office, Jim hadn't asked Blair any questions, and had been shooting Simon warning glances. Unnecessary - Blair wasn't about to shatter or anything - but appreciated.

"The files are organized by the victim's name," said Jim. "In those bottom drawers, there are also folders for each year, and of alleged abductors."

"Okay," said Blair, opening the drawer labeled 'Q to T'. The folders were every color imaginable. Samuelson. Sandwell. Sandburg should be right between those folders, right? Found it - Sandburg, Naomi...

"Naomi has a file! Wait, that means she was a victim..."

"Pink folder? Female-endangered-runaway," said Simon, looking over his shoulder. "September, 1968. The green sticker means she came home, or that she aged out and someone verified that her location was known to her family. Surprised nobody yanked this out of here. Ah, yup, here it is, she came home pregnant to have her baby." He smiled at Blair. "Isn't that sweet. I wonder how he turned out?"

"Dammit, Simon, this isn't funny," said Blair. At least he knew now that Naomi had had a child. Please let it be him!

No file on him, though. Maybe his memories of the woman in white weren't from Cascade? "Is there some national database I can check?"

"When do you think whatever happened, happened?" asked Jim.

"I was three, I think. I remember writing my name. On a ball, just like one I saw in Kenny's bedroom."

"So, 1972 or '73, right?" asked Jim, opening the left bottom drawer. "Let's see. 1972. Most were teenage runaways, and we can ignore the girls. Hmmm... little boy named Jacob Moss. Last seen with - Naomi Lynette Sandburg!"

"Shit," said Simon. Blair stood, feeling numb, while Jim opened another drawer and pulled out a red folder. The color of Vice Principal Morris's polyester suit. Jim then stooped to the other bottom drawer and pulled out a plain folder labeled 'S'.

"Conference room?" asked Jim.

"Yeah - let's go back upstairs. Ours have locks," said Simon.

\- - - - - - -

Two minutes later, they were in Conference Room B. Blair sat a bit more heavily than he'd meant to, and Jim placed the red folder in front of him. He opened it, and found himself staring at a full-color family portrait of - himself, as a toddler? And two smiling adults, both a few years younger than he was now. The woman could have been the woman in white, but absent the blue headband of his memories it was hard to tell. The man was a complete stranger.

"So that's what you'd look like with short hair and goatee," said Simon.

"No way, man," said Blair, putting the picture aside.

Beneath it was a photocopy of a newspaper article, headlined 'Local Couple Waits and Prays', featuring the same picture. He read the caption aloud. "'Jeremy and Janice Moss hope that Naomi Sandburg, a drug user and former runaway, will return young Jakie to the comfortable Northside home he has shared with his father and stepmother for the past two years.'"

He dropped the paper and covered his face with his hands. Stepmother. Not mother. Mother was Naomi. Thank you thank you thank you! He felt Jim's hands on his shoulders, kneading them. He exhaled and wiped a sleeve across his eyes. "I was afraid - I was afraid that Naomi..." He couldn't complete the sentence.

Jim reached around him to take the article. "May I?"

After Blair nodded, Jim commenced, "'The house is spotless, the yard immaculate. Inside the garage, a shiny new tricycle awaits. "I want things to be perfect for him when he comes home," says Janice Moss. Her husband agrees. "You work so hard to provide a home for your family," says Jeremy Moss, a lifelong resident of Cascade who traveled east for college and returned to our area in 1969 with a law degree from Boston College. "To have somebody steal it away from you, it's just unthinkable."

"'Jacob Moss is the result of what Mr. Moss describes as a "stupid, stupid fling" with Naomi Sandburg, a high school drop-out he met at a party in August of 1968. The boy lived with Ms. Sandburg until a year and a half ago, when the Mosses, concerned about Ms. Sandburg's lifestyle, obtained custody. "We weren't required to allow visitation, but we did anyway," says Mrs. Moss. "We thought he should grow up knowing that woman. His other grandparents are good people."

"'Ms. Sandburg was allowed to spend several hours every other Saturday with the boy, who turned three in May. Two weeks ago, the pair didn't return at the pre-arranged hour of six. At first, say the Mosses, they weren't overly concerned; Ms. Sandburg was "flaky" on occasion, says Mrs. Moss. As six became seven and then eight, with no word from Ms. Sandburg, the Mosses became increasingly concerned. "With her history of drug use - well, you just don't know," says Mr. Moss. "'First, the worried couple called Ms. Sandburg's parents, then friends, then hospitals. It wasn't until 9 that they contacted the police.

"'"By that time, it was just too late," says Cascade Police Captain Neil Gordon. "The first hours are critical in this sort of case." Investigators found that Ms. Sandburg had, over the previous month, emptied her savings account and sold her jewelry. Family acquaintances report that she also took money from her parents' house, where she had been living intermittently. Her father's car, which she used for visits to Jacob, was found just north of the Oregon border.

"'"She had things well planned," says Capt. Gordon. "Obviously she had help, but we don't know if that help came from local sources. Ms. Sandburg appears to have traveled widely, and knows many, shall we say, shady characters. War protestors and the like."

"'Ms. Sandburg's parents, lifelong pillars of the Eastside Jewish community, have been reluctant to comment on the record. Police sources say they are confident that they had no hand in Ms. Sandburg's actions, and do not know her whereabouts.

"'At the Mosses' house, life continues. After showing this reporter Jacob's room, Mrs. Moss dabs tears, not for the first time during our visit. "I just want my baby home," she says. "The law can do what it wants to that woman. I just want Jakie home."

"'The Cascade police department wishes the community to be on the lookout for Ms. Sandburg. She is a 21-year-old white female with strawberry blond hair. She is known to frequent peace rallies. She calls Jacob by his first name, Blair.'"

"Damn," said Simon as Jim finished.

Jim leafed through the rest of the papers in the folder. "There's a lot here," he said. "Dates, police records, interviews, Blair's birth certificate (which doesn't say Moss anywhere), a few more articles, a few sightings during the early 70's - one from San Antonio in 1975, does that make sense? - but I think that article sums it up."

Blair nodded, torn between fleeing and reading every scrap in the folder. Finally, he managed, "does this mean there's a warrant out for Naomi?"

Simon picked up the other folder Jim had brought into the room. "No," he said. "There was, until 1980. There's a page on her in here, with a note saying 'Blair Sandburg's parents have reached a mutually-satisfactory agreement about his custody'. The difference in last names is probably why this information didn't make it into Blair's file."

"What do you want to do now, Chief?" asked Jim.

"I've got to go see Naomi," said Blair.

\- - - - - - -

Coming out the conference room, they were met by an excited Detective Rafe. "Just got a call from Hughes with the FBI. The message is to back off on the Kenny Yates case. What do you think of that?"

"Wonderful," growled Simon and Jim in unison. Blair just kept on walking. So Kenny was going to be able to live with Mommy and Daddy on a goat farm somewhere. Some kids had all the luck.

\- - - - - - -

Within minutes, without any conscious effort on Blair's part, they were in Jim's truck headed for Alpine Falls. Blair took out the stack of mid-terms and began reading the top paper.

"What are you doing?" asked Jim.

"My job," snapped Blair.

"In the mood for some Doors?"

Blair sighed. "Absolutely."

Jim slid in a tape. From 30 years ago, Jim Morrison began to sing of love - his hope that it would bring redemption, the knowledge that it wouldn't.

The Sunday afternoon traffic was light, and they were quickly out of Cascade and into the hills of the national forest. To his surprise, after reading the first essay three times, Blair found himself racing through the in-class efforts of his students. It seemed at the best way to read Freshman writing was to be half out of your mind.

"What should I do while you talk to her?" asked Jim after a bit.

"I don't care - no, actually, could you stick around close enough to listen in?"

"Really?"

"I might need some help recalling specific facts later." And, it will keep me from throttling her, he added silently.

"No problem," said Jim.

\- - - - - -

The Alpine Falls 'cabin' was a string of small rooms, built gradually over the years, that each opened to the outside to give the owners privacy. To the left, a larger common room held a kitchen, a table, several ancient sofas, and lots of books, including an unbelievable number of really bad mysteries and a 1958 Encyclopedia Britannica that Blair had trash-picked the summer he was 17.

Naomi's private room was the third add-on. She'd purchased it when Blair had started college at Rainier and she'd felt free to close down the apartment they'd shared. Blair had spent very little time there - over the summers when he was younger, he'd generally preferred to be in the field or working, and it didn't make sense to live so far out of town. And a semi-heated, poorly-insulated cabin was not where he'd wanted to spend time over winter breaks, even if he was rather fond of the other owners. Instead, he'd usually flown to wherever Naomi had been; Naomi had a tendency to make good choices, climate-wise.

As they pulled up, Blair was relieved to only see one car - Naomi's. Naomi and Charlie stepped out of her room, looking as if they'd expected them. The hazard of one's mother dating a psychic.

"Blair, we have to talk," began Naomi as they exited the truck.

"You've got that right. No lies," said Blair. "Please."

"Detective Ellison! Such a pleasure to see you again!" said Charlie. "Shall we head down to the parlor?"

Blair followed Naomi into her room, into what was as close as she came to having a home. Though it was her only permanent abode, she'd resisted using it as a storage space. Instead, it featured the necessities for holing up for a few days every now and again - a queen-sized bed covered with a patchwork quilt, several easy chairs around a coffee table, a chest of drawers. Under the bed as a platform on wheels supporting a thin, but reasonably comfortable, twin mattress. Her nod toward motherhood. The walls were draped with textiles from different parts of the Americas. Behind the fabrics, one wall held built-in cabinets that contained most of Naomi's 'things' - mostly clothes. A dresser completed the room; on it were a couple of pictures of Blair, and one of her parents. Her books were in the common room; Blair had no idea where her important papers were, assuming she even kept track of them.

No, of course her papers would be in order, wherever they were. One couldn't be as scattered as Naomi without being really well-organized.

Naomi gestured Blair toward one of the easy chairs as she took the other.

"I know everything," Blair blurted. "The PD has quite a file on me. I'm some poor three-year-old who's been kidnapped by a crazed drug addict."

"After we talked yesterday, I realized you were very close to figuring out certain aspects of your past. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lied."

"Yesterday, or ever?"

"At first, I was lying to protect you. Then, to protect my arrangement with your father. Finally, just because there seemed to be no sense in bothering you with it all."

"Knowing who my father is - in my book, that's not a bother."

"Let me start at the beginning," said Naomi. "What do you know about your conception?"

"Oh, no, we're not doing that. After yesterday, I'm not feeding you information you can, can spin to your liking."

"Blair, please, honey, this isn't easy for me either." But her eyes were dry. How could her eyes be dry? He was so sure he'd be able to tell whether or not she was being truthful if they were face to face, but now he had doubts. She knew him better than he knew her. He didn't even know whether or not she should be crying.

She took a deep breath. "I met Jeremy Moss at the beach..."

"At a party. You met him at a party."

"At a BEACH party the summer after my Junior year of high school. He was interning at a law firm here, and I was sick of teenage boys. I'd been raised to marry a doctor or a lawyer, after all, and here I'd found one! In his favor, I don't think he knew I was 16; he said, later, he thought I was talking about college, not high school, when I mentioned school. And I was tall, and I'd developed early, and I hadn't been a virgin for quite some time..."

"Mom!"

"You want the whole story, dear. Let me tell it. Anyway, we enjoyed that August thoroughly."

"Neither of you had heard of birth control?"

"I thought I couldn't get pregnant if we did it standing up."

"Uh, too much information," said Blair.

"Well, you asked, dear. Anyway, you were conceived our last evening together. Then, away he went, back to law school in Boston, completely ignorant of my condition. I knew he planned to come back the next summer, and I naturally assumed we'd resume our romance; he had completely different ideas in that regard. He even left me a bogus address and phone number.

"Two weeks later, my period didn't come. I just KNEW that that meant we had to get married immediately, so I emptied my savings account of my birthday money and bought a bus ticket."

"You didn't think to talk to your parents?"

"Are you kidding? Parents weren't people you talked to. Not in 1968. Anyway, I got to Boston without incident. When I couldn't find anything matching the address he'd given me, I just checked the phone book, and headed over. Which is where I met Janice for the first time, sporting a brand-new diamond ring. I claimed I was Jeremy's cousin, starting at Harvard that fall. Might as well shoot high, right? She bought it, and Jeremy caught on quick when he came home, and backed me up. Janice even let me stay at her place while I got my 'roommate situation' at Harvard straightened out. After all, she wasn't using it now that they were engaged.

"So, I turned 17 a pregnant high school dropout thousands of miles from home. It was so absurd it was hilarious. There was nothing to do but pretend like I really went to Harvard.

"Now, when it comes to wonderful places and times, Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1968 ranks fairly high. You've got to understand, Cascade was still just a logging town, really. Radical was preferring Nixon to Goldwater. But Cambridge! I just sort of hung out, wandered into classes and talks and teach-ins, that sort of thing. Met Timothy Leary at an underground coffeehouse I got a job at, met B.F. Skinner, Berry Brazelton, many others I later learned were famous. Got a bed in a group house. My roommates noticed I was getting larger and got me to a clinic, so I even ended up with decent prenatal care.

"I eventually figured out that I really couldn't do what I was doing AND take care of a baby, so when spring came I called home. Mama came out to get me and I returned here in disgrace. With a taste for the benefits of disgraceful behavior, though.

"While my friends were graduating high school, I was two miles away, pushing you out. I took the timing as validating my choices.

"So, after you were born I lived with my parents and spent my days at the library. I didn't even have enough money to buy a coke, but that was okay. I ate what my mom served, I nursed you and slept with you - things I'd heard about in Cambridge that nobody else in Cascade was doing, but, like I said, I'd gotten a taste for being radical.

"Meanwhile, Jeremy and Janice had gotten married that winter, and they moved to Cascade to be happy little Republicans. I bore them no ill-will. Jeremy certainly never offered any sort of support, and my parents didn't want any more attention paid to my situation, so they didn't push.

"Janice started trying to get pregnant as soon as they got married, I later gathered. After trying for over a year, she started to get worried. At about that time, she realized that I had had you. Now, everyone else sort of figured I'd gotten pregnant in Massachusetts, but Janice did the math and realized that there was a good chance that I'd headed east pregnant, and that Jeremy was the father. She'd long since figured out that we'd had a thing going the previous summer, of course, which may be why they got married so quickly.

"So, she was having a hard time having a baby, but Jeremy already had one. A neat trick if she could have THAT one, right? They first approached me about getting to know you when you were six months old. I frankly LOVED the idea of using them as free babysitters, but they wouldn't deal with pumped breastmilk and I didn't want you getting formula, so I said no. They started giving you presents, though, which I thought was lovely of them. Gave me a little independence from my parents - I didn't have to beg them for cooler-weather clothes for you. When they started pressing more forcefully to spend time with you the spring you turned one, well, I was happy to let them.

"At first, it was every week or two, for an evening. Then, Janice volunteered to sit for you every morning; I JUMPED at the opportunity to be able to work. My mother started to do some child care, too - I think Janice shamed her into it. So, I got a bit of my old life back.

"Janice started to suggest overnights when you were, oh, 18 months old. I put my foot down, though. I mean, you were still nursing at night, and while I craved some independence and mobility, I was fine waiting a bit longer.

"When I told Janice why I didn't want you spending any nights with her and your father, she grew really alarmed. I was still doing THAT with HER SON? I said, hell yes, and offered to take her to see my pediatrician. Instead, she called up a friend of Jeremy's who was a social worker and told them a load of bull. They got emergency 'temporary' custody.

"So, when you were 20 months old, they took you from me. My little boy..." she paused, swallowing hard. "Excuse me," she said, "even now, this is hard."

"You fought it, though?"

"Oh, yes. My parents were quite incensed and supported me. But Janice and Jeremy were such model citizens and I was a former runaway. Who'd mentioned knowing Timothy Leary, so I had to be a druggie. And, they claimed I'd supported myself in Boston as a prostitute - no other way for a 17-year-old to survive the streets, right? We mobilized some support, but all the people who'd known me in Boston were thousands of miles away. And the coffeehouse wasn't the sort of place that gave out pay stubs or issued W-2s.

"Even my being friendly with the Mosses counted against me. I obviously thought they were fit parents.

"We made our case, and while it was being considered a judge strongly advised them that they allow me visitation. Which amounted to supervised visits every other weekend. After a while they let me spend a bit more time with you, some of it unsupervised. "Things dragged on. I lived with the situation, even saw some good in it. But, things started to worry me. They called you by your middle name and made you call her Mommy and me Naomi. You were becoming very afraid of making mistakes, which seemed wrong in a two-year-old - I never figured out whether this was because of how they disciplined you, or because you were afraid I'd go away for good if you were naughty. And, Janice was taking you to church, which I objected to. Even enrolled you in a church-sponsored preschool the minute you were old enough.

"Our lawyer was confident that I would be able to get more generous visitation than what the Mosses were allowing, but he was pretty clear that it wouldn't be even half-time. More like every other weekend and maybe an evening a week.

"I didn't want this to be our life. I decided we had to leave. So we did."

"Just like that?"

"I'd done it once already, four years earlier. At almost 21, it was even simpler. I sold everything I could sell discretely, I took what I'd saved up..."

"You stole from Grandpa..."

"I obtained an involuntary loan from my parents, and took off. Drove south, ditched the car at a place where a couple of highways were only a few miles apart, dressed you in pink since I figured the authorities would be looking for a little boy, and carried you, on my back, over a low range to the other highway. Hitched south. Spent a few weeks in LA, then got spooked and headed to Texas. I discovered there were advantages to being in a community used to residents without official, shall we say, US-government-recognized identities. I even got you into Head Start. I cleaned houses while you were in school; that made enough to eat and rent that awful little room in that trailer."

"Yeah, I remember that."

"And that's pretty much the tale. At times we shared expenses with men I thought might make good fathers..."

"So, there was nothing really WRONG with Jeremy?" He'd been waiting and waiting for - it. Some awful thing that Naomi had had to save him from.

"No."

"You took me from my FATHER, for no good reason. In other words."

"He wasn't really involved in you. It was all Janice."

"You took me from my FATHER, who was fighting to give me a home, and took me to live in a dump in Texas."

"It was all Janice!"

"I DON'T GIVE A..."

"HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME!" Now they were both out of their chairs, eye to eye.

"Your darling FATHER - do you know why we were able to return to Cascade? Because he and Janice broke up, and he called up my parents and offered to make all charges against me go away if I made sure you had nothing to do with him. He was remarrying and didn't want his new wife to know anything about you."

The door to the cabin opened, and Charlie Spring leaned around it. "Don't shoot! The detective and I have made spaghetti. Anyone hungry?"

"No," said Blair, but Naomi turned and left the room. He let out a yell of frustration and followed.

\- - - - - - -

Over dinner, Naomi and Jim carried the bulk of the conversation, as if everything was perfectly normal. Charlie mostly glared at Blair; for his part, Blair wanted nothing other than to get home.

After an infinitely-long half-hour, they returned to the truck. The pile of mid-terms lay in his seat where he'd left them. "Shit," he said, banging the top of the truck. "Oww."

"Easy on the poor gal," said Jim. "What's wrong."

"I am so NOT going to want to deal with these when we get home, and it's pitch dark so there's no way I can do them on the road."

"You drive, then," said Jim. "I'll read them."

"You'll GRADE them?"

"No, I'll read them aloud."

"You'd do that? The shadows won't drive you crazy?"

"Don't think so. Let's try."

So Blair drove. Navigating the dark mountain road and listening to Jim combined to keep his mind occupied, which, he fully knew, was the point.

Twenty minutes later, it was Jim's turn to hurt his hand on his truck. "That essay isn't THAT bad, is it?" asked Blair.

"I just remembered - I was supposed to call Angie about 5 hours ago. We were going to catch a movie tonight."

"Oh, shit, Jim, I'm so sorry. I could have..."

Jim whacked him with one of the blue exam books. "Don't be an idiot, Sandburg. I'm mad at myself for forgetting to call and cancel. Not your fault."

\- - - - - - -

As the approached the loft, Blair began counting down the minutes until he'd be in the safety of his room. Five minutes turned to three, and then they'd parked. Blair made it through the front door and then into his room. With exaggerated care, he place d the pile of graded mid-term essays on his desk, then kicked off his shoes. Then, finally, he dropped onto the bed, burrowing head-first into a pillow.

He could have had a father. He could have had a family. Stability. Damn it, trombone lessons. No creepy boyfriends to protect Naomi from - okay, he might have had some of those, but maybe Jeremy could have backed him up. If he'd been around, he could have saved the Mosses' marriage. He'd have been the perfect child and Janice would have been happy.

He thought about the article Jim had read aloud at the police station. The description of Janice's grief blurred with his fresh memory of Arlene Yates wringing her hands and fighting back tears. And, he was sure that there'd been Mrs. Morrises as well, people who'd known Naomi and hated themselves for missing signs that she was about to take off. The door to his room opened a little.

"You okay, Chief?"

"What do you think?"

Displaying his usual social tact, Jim entered the room. "Can I get you anything?"

"My childhood?"

The bed dipped slightly; Jim had perched on the side.

Still into the pillow, Blair found himself saying, "I really, really hate her."

And now, Jim was going to tell him all about how he'd always talked about how happy he'd been as a kid, moving around and meeting different people. He'd been a stupid kid; he hadn't known any better, and it had all been built on lies.

But Jim said, "I know you do, Chief. But - I don't think you always will."

Blair's ragged breaths bounced off the pillow, too hot. He ached everywhere.

After a bit, Jim asked, "do you think you'll try to look Jeremy up?"

"I don't know. I don't really feel like talking right now."

"Sorry." But Jim stayed put.

"It's just - I started the weekend with this wonderful mother. And, for a while, I had three parents. And now - I might as well be down to zero," Blair tried to explain.

For the second time that day, he felt Jim's hands on his shoulders, kneading them. He must seem so pathetic.

After a few moments, Jim spoke. "I don't want you to think that... that you are out of family." He paused. "Simon would be crushed."

Blair barked a surprised laugh into his pillow, then rolled away so that he could look up at Jim. "Simon?"

"You know, he loves you like a son."

"Simon would be crushed."

"Absolutely."

How do you tell your best friend you love him too? "Go to hell, Ellison."

Laughing now, Jim got up. "Good night, Blair," he said.


End file.
